The Newest Model in Refrigerators

LAKE FOREST, Ill. — The Chicago Bears are playing Fatball. William (the Refrigerator) Perry is the biggest thing in Chicago since the stockyards. Next year they are going to run America’s Marathon around him. Referees are going to penalize the Bears for too much man on the field.

He is Fat Albert in football pants. Having dieted down, reportedly, to 308 pounds, he has gone from defensive lineman to special teams player to blocking back to running back. Next, they might line him up at wide, wide, wide, wide receiver. Maybe he can catch. Maybe he can pass.

“Wait and see,” said the Fridge.

What he did on “Monday Night Football” was amazing enough. Anyone who did not see it really missed something. Anyone who saw it on a Sony Watchman probably did not see all of it.

Frank Gifford, who once hawked Westinghouse refrigerators in TV ads, said during Chicago’s 23-7 win over Green Bay that Perry possibly had “revolutionized short-yardage offense.” From now on, any team needing a yard is liable to find the fattest guy on the sideline and either give him the ball or run behind him.

Twice, the Refrigerator flattened Packer linebacker George Cumby, leading Walter Payton into the end zone. He left an imprint of Cumby’s body in the ground, like in the cartoons. Perry was asked here Tuesday at the Bear training camp what his teammates said to him after rolling over Cumby.

“They told me I murdlized the guy,” Fridge said.

The second time the Bears were near the end zone, they handed Perry the ball. He hit pay dirt. He destroyed pay dirt. Nobody has seen a drive like that on TV since “Rawhide.” When Perry spiked the ball, he nearly drilled it straight to China.

Coach Mike Ditka thought up this stuff. He now says it had nothing to do with paying back the San Francisco 49ers for using a lineman in the backfield in last year’s NFC championship game. He says he had it ready for Washington the previous week--only then, the idea of using the Refrigerator as that lineman had not yet occurred to him.

Perry, a happy-go-lucky, always-smiling, gap-toothed rookie from Clemson who was born exactly one year before tight end Ditka and the Bears won the 1963 NFL title, said the coach is “gonna give himself a ‘Genius’ button. He says, ‘Hey, I thought of this!’ ”

And now, everybody might start doing it. Already there is speculation that Minnesota will use 302-pound rookie Tim (the Ice Box) Newton or 318-pound veteran Curtis Rouse the very same way when the Vikings come to Chicago Sunday. Dennis Johnson, a Viking linebacker, said Tuesday that Perry was a big dump truck, and that the only way anyone is going to stop him is with an elephant gun.

Genius Ditka said he could see it happening, not just with wide guys but with big guys. “I’m sure you could put Howie Long out there in that situation and he’d do a good job,” Ditka volunteered.

A serious conflict right now is whether teams should resent it or copy it. “I talked to the Green Bay people and they said 50% of them thought we was rubbing it in and 50% thought it was just good football,” Perry said.

Ditka, who frankly is more worried about injured quarterback Jim McMahon’s questionable status--McMahon has a sprained ankle, bruised buttocks and a sore triceps--oozed sarcasm Tuesday when he heard that some of the Packers and some of ABC’s announcers had questioned his use of Perry as well as his having ordered passes against the 3-4 Packers when Monday’s game seemed to be safely in hand.

“In this world, I’ve learned that I don’t know quite as much as announcers and I don’t know quite as much as the opposition,” Ditka said. “When I let the opposition decide what we should do, then our record would probably be 3-4 also.”

He passed, he said, because the Packers used a nine-man line. “If anybody said we were trying to rub it in, they’re stupid,” Ditka said. “Maybe we ought to forfeit. Maybe if we’re not going to play nice, we ought to just give them the game.”

That became the theme of the day. Asked later how he might use Perry next, Ditka said you never know, and added: “I might have to check it out with the other teams. If they don’t like it, we won’t do it.” And furthermore: “People weren’t afraid to offend the Bears for years. When you start winning, I guess you start offending people.”

Ditka has a motorcycle gang of a football team led by a quarterback, McMahon, who wears red sunglasses and a punk haircut and recently posed for the cover of Inside Sports magazine dressed as Rambo. McMahon plays with his sleeves rolled up, as if he had a pack of Camels hidden up there, and now other Bears do the same. They are the James Dean of football teams.

Since most of the Bears are characters, the Refrigerator fits right in. He is a rookie in a size-56 coat who says he eats cereal out of a mixing bowl. He weighed 300-plus in high school. At a scouting camp in Arizona last winter, the scale stopped at 350 and so did Perry, so the man measuring him announced: “350 and rising!” Minnesota’s Newton was there, too. “William kept complaining about the food,” he said. “But that didn’t stop him from eating it.”

Into his mouth go the groceries and out of it comes funny, fast-talking mumbling. Walter Payton mimics him constantly. “William!” Payton called across the clubhouse to him Monday, after first imitating him for reporters. “Gimmetheball Icanget6yardseverytime,” mumble, mumble, mumble.

Perry laughed and laughed. He loves the jokes. He is looking forward to going to New York to be David Letterman’s guest Nov. 11--the Refrigerator goes to the Apple, as opposed to vice versa. His agent, Jim Steiner of St. Louis, meanwhile, was flooded with calls Tuesday from people wanting the Fridge to endorse cars, clothes and, naturally, appliances.

“I didn’t plan on making him a national hero,” Ditka said.

He was asked what the late George Halas might think of all this.

“I don’t think he would reprimand me for using William in the backfield against the Green Bay Packers,” Ditka said.

And Vince Lombardi?

“I don’t think he would reprimand me, either,” Ditka said. “I think he would laugh. And then he’d say: ‘That no good dirty so and so. I’ll get back at him.’ ”

Fat chance.